I insist on...

You say in your letter of 28th June that the fees are not so high as they have been before the war. I think that this does not concern foreigner artists and I insist on getting the highest fees.

With Kindest Regards,

Yours Truly,

Sergei Rachmaninoff

(Letter to agent, 1918)

Saint-Saëns/Godowsky: Le cygne (The Swan)

I have to go out in a minute so here is this morning's present for you. An elegant swan!

Bad News for Pianists!

If, as I have said before, endurance is not the most difficult thing to acquire in playing, what, then, is most difficult?

There are two greatest difficulties, tone and pedaling.

And the pedal is hardest of all to learn!

Vladimir Horowitz, 1932


Oh dear! It could be true - many many things are difficult in piano playing, but AFTER you have fixed them all, there is still a basic problem to solve!

Tone is a very fundamental thing. Some people don't believe in it. They think you can't change the sound of the piano. Well, that's like saying the conductor doesn't change the orchestra. Some people don't believe in that either.

And pedalling is something that affects the performance of a composition from the early years of study, yet it is something that is almost never given proper attention. It's really quite important. Exactly what goes on with the pedal beyond what we at the beginning called "a pedal change" is quite complex.

There are many technical issues in piano playing. No matter how many, the number is limited. So if you study it systematically, and fix your problems, then at some point you will ARRIVE AT THE END. Or actually, as we call it, the beginning.

What Upsets Me Is...

What upsets me is that I occasionally think of listening to some piece of music (principally for research, but I'd like to be able enjoy it too) but it is impossible to do so.

It is impossible because apparently nearly nobody can be bothered discovering the true character of music. They instead prefer to play "their version".

It's very lazy!

There are always an infinite number of ways of playing music. Even if I somehow magically guide you to see the composer's way, there is still an infinity of choices. There is no such thing as an "authorised version", except in rare - and unhealthy - cases. Yet I'm claiming that there is some way of testing if you've got the right way.

It's a bit much to go into today, but it's along the lines of

Jack: I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was... well, I was found.
Lady Bracknell: Found?
Jack: Yes. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentlemen of a kindly disposition found me and gave me the name of Worthing because he happened to have a first class ticket to Worthing at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It's a seaside resort.
Lady Bracknell: And where did this charitable gentlemen with the first class ticket to the seaside resort find you?
Jack: In a handbag.
Lady Bracknell: [closes eyes briefly] A handbag?
Jack: Yes, Lady Bracknell, I was in a hand bag. A somewhat large... black... leather handbag with handles... to it.
[pause]
Lady Bracknell: An ordinary handbag.
Lady Bracknell: And where did this Mr. James... or, Thomas Cardew come across this ordinary handbag?
Jack: The cloak room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own...
Lady Bracknell: [Shocked] The cloak room at Victoria Station?
Jack: Yes. The Brighton line.
Lady Bracknell: The line is immaterial.

[The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde, first performed 1895]

In the case of the famous line "a HAND-BAG?", we know the handbag is important so that's why the word is emphasised. It's not normally a question of "A handbag?" because this is not the important word, so far as i can see.

I know this is an extremely simple example.

It's a simple thing I am telling you, you see.

Anyway, it's a bit like that. you work out the handbag is important in one line, then it gets mentioned again so you know there is something about this handbag.

But to take the musical analogy, some actor (musician) has discovered that he pronounces the diphthong "A" rather well. So she decides to make that the focus. No question of meaning, just effective sound.

Ok fine but unfortunately music is a language too and if you ignore the meaning then it becomes meaningless.

It's not that difficult to work it out. I'm sure lots of people will disagree with me over the future years, and they are welcome to as long as they don't damage anybody in the process, but we will gradually get to the point where we understand the language of music. Yes!

----------------

It has recently come to my attention that there is an excellent recording (1952) of the Liszt Piano Sonata in B minor, by Maria Grinberg, the pupil of F. M. Blumenfeld and K. N. Igumnov at the Moscow Conservatory.

Although - to be unneccesarily honest about it - this recording does not entirely speak in the language of the music itself, by virtue of the personal choices of the artist, this recording makes so many great choices and shows many faces of the work that are normally smoothed over in favour of "playing the piano well", that: I think...that...if this were the only recording in the world...then I'd be quite happy with that. It's that good. That's what I think.

I may wish for other things in this piece, but that is a true fact that I just told you. I.e. for me it is possible to be better than this but it is good enough. And that's extremely good if you are familiar with my exacting standards.

Thanks to Prof. Pascal Némirovski for finding it for us.

part one

part two

part three

Real People

It's hard to imagine old black-and-white people as real colour people. All the old people - Busoni, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Alkan, Chopin and company - they were all colour people.

And then it's hard to hear old recordings as real performances ("colour"). I hear Rachmaninov tearing away at 300 mph in his 3rd Concerto and wonder what he really sounded like.

I'm sure we can get closer to imagining what it was all really like.

They were people, like all the people you see today. Not monochrome prints.

Something must be done to invite them to step out of the page...

Chasse-neige (Snowdrift)

Liszt is strange sometimes. He had problems with being considered serious. He wrote so much for the crowd that he must have felt a bit odd. Maybe he felt he was not quite being himself most of the time. Was he a serious composer or just an octave-merchant? Well, you know, Beethoven wrote octaves...but not like that!

Perhaps this is one reason he liked to paraphrase (transcribe) other people's music.

Yet Liszt also wrote more serious-sounding music, such as his earnest and for-posterity Sonata in B minor. Serious composers wrote sonatas, remember!

On the one hand, to me this work sounds like a more cerebral version of the Mephisto Waltz no. 1, with added religious subject matter (also improved with things stolen from Alkan's Quatre Âges sonata). On the other hand, the Faust story (Liszt picked the Lenau version, but he would obviously have known the Goethe one too), no matter how sensational the episode, has serious philosophical undertones - and with Liszt, as a cultured and intelligent man, no matter how much of the music is directed at the gallery, I think there is always some serious purpose not far away from the surface.

Anyway, there is a nice piece at the end of his Transcendental Studies, called Chasse-neige.

These studies are often difficult, and often quite big and "Lisztian". Yet writing studies is a scholarly occupation, like writing sonatas, so Liszt is being serious again as well.

Bearing this in mind, I think it's interesting that he ends with a more introverted piece. It's true, it does get loud, but also it has some of the quietest, lightest writing of the twelve studies.

What I wanted to tell you was this.

Liszt seems to me to go in a serious direction at the end of the Transcendental Studies. This serious snow-music reminds me of something else - the lonely figure at the end of Schubert's Winterreise, left out of the village like the old organ-grinder, in the end perhaps being erased by the white snowy landscape.

I find it amusing to note that while Schubert does it his way, Liszt's idea has us not so much erased by frozen blank finality - more like completely buried in the avalanche!

It was rather a dramatic snow-storm, after all.

But we shouldn't judge Liszt by our own standards, or anyone else's. Times were different then.

All the same, I rather like this piece.

It's really transcendental, too. To play it at its best would not sound particularly obviously difficult. But someone good enough to do that would be quite shockingly good!

I don't think I've ever heard it played exactly as I imagine it...but Mr. Arrau is good.

Pianoforte

I don't know if people realise how much skill it takes to play, not just the wrong notes, but the right wrong notes - and to play them at the right time.

No, my dears, I'm not talking about my piano-playing...

Chain of Command

Godowsky was a genius. A self-taught genius - the only kind there is, of course.

He learned how to do anything at all on the piano, and invented some new things too. If you want to have a lesson with Godowsky, try playing any of his music. It has lots of fingerings and helpful comments written in, so it's very instructive as playing music by a great pianist always is. Of particular note are his Studies on the Etudes of Chopin, which, since they are more difficult than Chopin's originals, raise the standard of piano playing in a rather helpful way.

Heinrich Neuhaus was Godowsky's student. There was a great teacher for you. And he was a great player too, though he spent most of his time teaching. You can learn a lot from his book The Art of Piano Playing. What he says seems obvious though, so you have to keep coming back to the book over many years to appreciate its value.

Then Neuhaus had a student called Sviatoslav Richter. He was good too!

Each of these people had their own talent, but it was helped by meeting one of the others. Destiny somehow allows people to look after each other.

Godowsky set off one day to find out how to play the piano, and look what happened!

Richter wasn't really a teacher but look what he did for us. If you can't learn from any of that, there's a problem somewhere!

Thanks very much to those three men, then. Thank you!

Where I have been, and what I did while I was there

Well, have you spotted that I haven't been writing this month? Me too. I don't like to leave you alone in the bleak internet without my protection but there is a reason for my absence. I have been being an accompanist! The reasons for this are: it's near my house, I get money, I get the benefit of other people's lessons and masterclasses, also it gives me something to think about.

The other reason for my absence is to do with piano practice, and is something I'm not revealing at the moment....

Interesting people I have met and been in lessons with include Pascal Némirovski (piano), Thomas Brandis (violin), and Tomotada Soh (violin, formerly Szigeti's assistant). I heard a few interesting things there. Also I find it's good just to be in the room with a master of some instrument or subject - I learn even without learning! I can't promise it's the same for everyone though (unfortunately!)

So what have I played? Have a look at the list:


Bruch Concerto for Violin and Viola (or Violin and Clarinet)
Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1st movement)
Mozart Violin Concerto No. 5 (1st mvt)
Brahms Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor (complete)
Takemitsu Hika (vln)
Wieniawski Variations on an Original Theme (vln)
Messiaen Theme and Variations (vln)
Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 (1st mvt)
Grieg Violin Sonata No. 1 (1st mvt)
Szymanowski Violin Concerto No. 2 (1st mvt)
Szymanowski Violin Sonata in D minor (complete)
Weber Romance (trombone, presumably an arrangement for this instrument from maybe a cello piece or something)
Reinecke Ballade (flute)
Godard Valse Op. 116 No. 3 (flute)
Gaubert Sonatine (flute; complete)
Creston Sonata (alto sax)
Grovlez Sarabande and Allegro (alto sax)
Shostakovitch Violin Concerto No. 1 (1st mvt) - twice!
Lutosławski Recitative and Arioso (vln)
Berlioz Harold en Italie (1st mvt; viola)
Poulenc Flute Sonata (1st and 2nd mvts)
Strauss Violin Sonata (1st mvt)
Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (1st mvt)
Bloch Trombone Symphony (complete)
Schumann Stück im Volkston Op. 102 No. 5 (I think; trombone, arranged from cello piece)
Bozza Ballade for Trombone and Piano
Bozza Hommage à Bach (trombone) - twice
Pryor Variations on Flower of Scotland (trombone)
Šulek Sonata "Vox Gabrieli" (1st mvt; trombone)
Rossini "Una Voce poco Fa" (from Il Barbiere di Siviglia; soprano)
Debussy Romance (soprano)
Menotti "Ah Michele don't you know" from The Saint of Bleecker Street (sop)
Mahler Hans und Grethe (sop)
David (Ferdinand not Félicien) Trombone Concertino (complete; sight-reading in the exam!)

That's it, finish!

I'm not sure, but it seems like a lot. What do you think?

Another reason I have been doing a lot of this is that other pianists agree to play things and then change their mind the day before the performance. However I do not change my mind.

When I was 14 I used to have a job accompanying for singers (3 nights a week at its maximum) at the local music academy, also where I had my piano lessons with Alex Abercrombie. He was a pupil of Yvonne Loriod and introduced me to the music of Finnissy (the two of them had been at college together). Also it was rather good to have an Alkan enthusiast in the local area!

You know, there is a difference between playing a piece without learning it (sight-reading) and playing it with all the details checked. Yes, you are saying, a big difference! But I can normally play something without knowing it - most music is similar after all. For example the key of C minor appears many times throughout pieces I know; certain topics like "Funeral March" have fellow pieces of the same type that I can remember and so I already have an idea of what it's going to be like. More could probably be said about "How to Sight Read"!

But when I'm doing that it's not the same as having a relaxed control over the material such as I have in a piece I'm familiar with. So that was the main, well, not really problem, with doing the accompanying, but it was at least something not-quite-positive that could be said about it. I hope to be able to know more music better.

But it's nice to meet all those pieces. It's worth practising sight-reading so you can do it too! It will help all those people with music exams and help you learn more pieces yourself!

As Charles Rosen says in "Piano Notes":

In about six months of sight-reading for three hours a day, one could go through most of the keyboard music of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Another few months and one can add Haydn, Debussy, and Ravel. Another hour and a quarter would suffice for all of Schoenberg's piano music (or two hours if you have trouble reading it at first), and an hour and a half will get you through Stravinsky, including the works for piano and orchestra, and ten minutes each for the solo piano works of Anton von Webern and Alban Berg.

So now you see what can be done. Of course, you don't have to do all that, but if you are going to have a job playing the piano in some form, it would be worth it. Also if you enjoy the piano I would imagine it would be interesting.

Having sight-read all those works, then you could decide what was good for you to learn. Otherwise it's back to the Chopin Four Ballades - AGAIN!

If you play the Four Ballades, I want to feel they are "Your Ballades" (pardon), otherwise it gets a bit upsetting for me. Crash crash crash there they go again. Oh and look I'm being sensitive here (where I can't play in tempo)!

And then there are other composers not on the Rosen-List, above. What are they like?

OK, that's all for today, see you soon!

Charles Rosen is Here

Charles Rosen was born on May 5th 1927. On February 2nd 2007 he will play Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata and Diabelli Variations at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. This is his eightieth year and tonight he was giving a talk in a funny room in the "newly refurbished" (i.e. not finished yet) Royal Festival Hall complex. He stood in front of the conference table and spoke from memory following a quite precise mental map of his hour-long discourse, interrupted only by anecdotes, reminiscences, and interesting facts. Behind the table was an upright piano that said "Welmar". Behind that was a door that said "Toilets". Mr Rosen didn't seem to mind. The main thing was that he was here.

Charles Rosen knows an awful lot about music and culture. I very much recommend to you his book "The Romantic Generation" which is a never-ending compendium of insight into the Romantic vein of music. He is an important man in the musical world but doesn't seem self-important. His only admissions of his own importance were a few jokes such as saying that when he had to move away from the microphone to the piano people at the back might not hear what he was saying, "But then, not everything I say is so interesting" - pause for laughter (which did come) because he obviously knows that everything he says is interesting. That's fine because he's right!

The talk was called "Beethoven's Ambition" and weaved its way through the territory of 18th century musical Europe at a time when although there were accepted great masters of art or of theatre (Raphael, Michelangelo; Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes etc.), there were none of the new instrumental style of music in which Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven hoped to make their way.

I made notes when I got home and what I remembered best were the anecdotes. Is this because of limited brain power, or is it just that Mr Rosen produces wisdom in a form that is useful and can be remembered?

Here is what he said:

When Stravinsky said he wanted his music played "without expression", that was wrong - Stravinsky never conducted his music that way. It wasn't expression he didn't like, it was Koussevitzky's expression!

Haydn was asked to send an opera to be performed in Prague. He replied that the operas he had written for the court at Esterhazy would not be suitable because they were written for a more provincial setting. He also said he couldn't send a new opera because he'd just heard The Marriage of Figaro and didn't care to try his luck at doing better!

The Magic Flute was the most varied opera (in terms of different forms and techniques used within the opera) written from its time until Alban Berg's Wozzeck.

E.T.A. Hoffmann was the greatest music critic ever.

George Bernard (pronounced here BerNARD) Shaw said that we would be shocked by the music of Mozart if it were not for its lovely melodies.

The Minuet finale of the Diabelli Variations shows Beethoven's lyrical genius - something little considered, and something that came a lot easier to Mozart than to Beethoven.

OK that's all for now. I might add more as I remember them. Tomorrow is a busy day with a Pierre Laurent Aimard masterclass in the morning, a lecture by Christopher Elton on the piano sonatas of Haydn at 6.30 then dash off to hear Charles Rosen play! It sounds like I am back at college again with all this to do. But I will never think I am too important to learn things, from anybody, famous or not. That's why hopefully one day someone will write about some interesting facts I said. While I was standing in front of a door saying "Toilets".

Rumours of his own demise

I heard today a recording of the Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos in E flat, K. 365, played by Chick Corea and Friedrich Gulda (conducted by Harnoncourt). That is Chick Corea, the jazz pianist, playing Mozart, with Friedrich Gulda, the classical pianist who also played jazz. It was quite good. I have now read that in the late 1990s Gulda faked his own death in order to see what the obituaries said about him. This is quite interesting! I would like to know a bit more...

Paderewski's Parrot

Paderewski had a parrot. He got it in New Zealand. It would scratch at the door when he was practising. Then when it was let in, it would perch on his pedalling foot. At certain moments it would exclaim,"Lord, what beautiful music!"

I read this in The Paderewski Memoirs. There is no mention of the parrot on the Internet, which is why I had to tell you the story myself. If you ask me, there is something wrong with people. Fancy not knowing about this parrot!

Art

I have found an online video of Art Tatum playing in 1954! Video, Vi-de-o! It is him!

Now you can see it yourself.

What do you think?

Identity

I have heard of two young pianists who changed their names.

One did it because there was already a pianist with the same name.

The other seemingly changed his name because his real name wasn't very interesting. I'm not sure about that, but certainly his new choice of name was much more exotic!

Actually, both names were changed to a more "exotic" one. Exotic means foreign, non-English, basically. The classic example was the American pianist Olga Samaroff (1880-1948, born Lucy Mary Olga Agnes Hickenlooper, in Texas). She later married Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977), who, though he had a Polish name and an indeterminate Mid-East-European accent, was from London. I know he was, there is a plaque about him on a school just up the road from my house. Actually it appears that Stokowski, despite having an exotic name, accent, hairstyle, etc, actually changed his name to a less exotic one! If what I read is correct, he was born Antoni Stanisław Bolesławowicz. I guess the public wouldn't have known what to do with that name. Well, I'm not a Stokowski biography expert (did you guess?) so we will have to leave him there for now.

What I was thinking was, if there was another pianist called Philip Howard, what would I do? You know, the genuine answer to that is I would expect him to change his name. I wonder what that tells you about me? I must be very egotistical! But not as much as people who take fake identitites. After all, they must be proud people who try to protect the new myth of themselves - so that nobody notices how boring they really are.

Except you, Leopold! Because, of course, the truth is everyone is a lot more interesting than they realise. If only they would have more confidence in themselves!

You heard it here first.